Went too hard, Vertical, Moonwalking, Terrible news

On Saturday I played a round of pickleball with Sue despite having a still troublesome IT band. I was able to get a couple hours of play in but it was far from pain free. I haven’t been that pleased with my play overall lately and I am pretty sure a large component of that is the pain in the leg. I am going to be focusing more on getting that better via some specific exercises. Although the pain radiates down the right leg from hip to knee it’s root cause is up in the hip area. The movements I will be doing actually work different muscles in the hip/rear end. The fact that my job has me sitting the majority of the day isn’t great either.

I have been 3D printing adjustable EUC stands for years. One of the parts I use has always been a bit of a pain in the ass to print, mostly because it utilizes supports which have to be removed once the print completes. For some unknown reason a light bulb went off in my head and I wondered how it would be if I flipped the model on it’s side and printed it that way, which would require no supports.

The model printed perfectly and with that orientation the part looked better and felt more solid than the way I was doing it before. To me it was a weird and unexpected reminder that just because you have done something a certain way for a long time, that does not mean it couldn’t be done differently and/or better.

Saturday afternoon I decided I wanted to reclaim my world speed record on the dual wheeled Inmotion E20. The rated top speed on the wheel is 12.4 MPH. During my initial testing I had accidentally hit 13.6 MPH which made the wheel beep and tilt back strongly. I joked that I was the fastest E20 rider in the world. Well since then another guy posted a screenshot of his E20 top speed of 14.5 MPH. So of course did I actually care seriously about this? No, but I thought it would be fun to try to beat it anyway.

I did a number of runs over on the greenway by my house, trying to accelerate hard before the tilt back would kick in. I managed to have one run top out at 14.7MPH, giving me the record, but I wanted more. I was so close to 15MPH, I thought I could get it. I did one more hard acceleration and even as the beeping and tilting back started I tried to lean forward through it. Then suddenly the resistance was gone and the wheel rotated forward, sending me to the ground. I overpowered it.

Luckily I was actually wearing gear on the off chance something like this happened which I did not expect. I landed on my left shoulder, arm and knee. I wound up with some minor road rash on both the arm and the shoulder and managed to break the camera mount I was using as well. I just had to laugh at myself. I have not overpowered a wheel to the point of it cutting out since my very early days of riding. Here is the video I shot of the silliness.

On Sunday my main focus was testing out the Moonwalker Aeros I was sent for review. These strap on mobility enhancers are unlike anything I ever tried before. I took them over to nearby Sugden Park for testing, thinking the path/sidewalks would be a good spot. I practiced with them for close to an hour. It is not as easy as it is depicted in their advertisements but I improved as I went on. I will need more practice for sure. The motors are on the loud side and as they accelerate the sound they make at higher speeds made me feel a bit unsure of myself and a bit nervous. It’s interesting tech for sure with the way they interact with your movement. Would I pay the $1099 asking price for a pair? Nope.

The rest of my Sunday was spent editing my footage as well as binge watching the next block of Cobra Kai episodes that were released. I’m a big fan of the show.

I talked to Todd on Sunday and got some terrible news. They recently had to put down one of their two dogs, Oakley (on left in picture) Oakley and Bailey were a brother sister pair that always put a smile on my face when I would visit. Oakley was a HUGE dog, weighing something around 180 pounds. Despite his massive size he was a big teddy bear with me.

Evidently he started limping awhile ago and after some testing the vets said they thought it was something simple like a muscle or connective tissue strain that would improve with time. It turns out he actually had aggressive bone cancer that had no viable cure. Hearing the news upset me, it was totally unexpected. Oakley was nine, the same age as Elsa. I’m going to miss him, he was a sweet, sweet boy.